Roasted strawberry-coconut-straciatella ice cream.

Hot weather makes me incapable of doing anything other than hiding in cool places and resting (preferably at the beach/pool), I can’t sleep, eat, think properly, let alone cook or bake. It has been sizzling hot these last couple of days, especially for Dutch summer standards, and I have been avoiding doing any major activities.

So I find it quite amazing that I was still able to create this summery ice cream, but I’m glad I did because it is so damn delicious and it is the only right thing to eat in this weather. Even though I was able to get myself into the kitchen to make this ice cream, I did wait till the weather cooled down a bit to tell you about this mind blowing ice cream. Strawberries are roasted, mashed and mixed with a coconut custard, churned into ice cream and mixed with chocolate, resulting in this roasted strawberry-coconut-straciatella ice cream.

The roasting of the fruit makes the flavor of the strawberries more intense, the coconut gives it a fresh twist and the bitter chocolate is a nice contrast to the sweet ice cream and makes for a nice little crunch. I think all of us need to have a tub filled with this in the fridge as an emergency kit for the next heatwave.

The only problem with the ice cream was this: even though I made the ice cream in the coolest place in the house, my room that is, it was still very warm. Of course this slowed down the freezing process (and the fact that my ice cream maker is just crappy didn’t really help), preventing the ice cream to turn into real ice cream, instead only turning into the best milkshake ever, so it the freezer had to do the last part. This of course resulted into ice cream that was quite crystalized and hard. It was still veryvery very delicious, but this is always a think to keep in mind when making ice cream.

Spread the strawberries in a single layer onto a baking sheet (with sides going up, otherwise your oven will be covered in sticky strawberry juice) and sprinkle with the 2 tbsp of sugar. Bake for 30 minutes. Mash up the strawberries with a fork and leave to cool for later use.

Set a glass bowl over a pot of simmering (not boiling!) water, and do not let the bowl touch that water. Add the egg yolks , the remaining sugar and a tablespoon of the coconut milk and stir. Stir the mixture for about 5 minutes. Add the rest of the coconut milk and whisk everything to combine. The custard will start to thicken just a bit. Strain through a fine strainer to remove any eggy bits (coconut scrambled eggs?). Add the mashed strawberries to the custard, but leave out the strawberry juice. Transfer the bowl to the fridge to cool down completely before churning it into ice cream.

Add the strawberry-coconut custard to your ice cream maker and churn according to instructions. You can leave out the chocolate, but why would you? While the ice cream is being churned, melt your chocolate either au bain marie or (carefully) in a microwave. Add the coconut oil and stir to combine, make sure that everything is melted and properly mixed. Leave to cool so that the chocolate is not too hot while being mixed with the ice cream.

When the ice cream is almost done, slowly drizzle in the (cooled down) chocolate. Transfer the ice cream to a container, you might need to mash up the chocolate a little bit or mix the ice cream and the chocolate a bit more at this stage. Freeze until firm.

I have to say, that ice cream looks fantastic! I love the idea of combining strawberry and coconut into one ice cream- two of my favourite flavours! I have never actually made ice cream before, but this recipe makes me seriously contemplate investing in an ice-cream machine, especially with the hot weather we have recently been having in the UK…
Thanks for sharing! :)

Hi Sarah – thanks! No credits to me for the flavor combo though, it has been done before. I bought my ice cream maker on the Dutch ebay, it’s not an amazing one, but it was cheap and it does the trick (most of the times at least). In case you’re going to buy one, enjoy ;)

Hi again! Haha, well I suppose pretty much all combos have been done before, but I have never tried this one so I definitely have to now if I have been missing out all this time! Thanks for telling me, I do definitely think that I have to invest in an ice cream maker because I love ice cream too much to not! Thank you! :)